you have to be a little bit crazy to survive

Entries tagged with light

I was outside at night, near a house where I lived with some other people. I had the impression that nobody else was outside. Maybe something major on television that I wasn't interested in for some reason. And this wasn't just in my area, but everywhere. I looked up at the stars, and saw an opening in the sky, somewhat wide and rectangular with rounded edges. It was set up with the longer length going from left to right as I was viewing it (as opposed to up-down or diagonal).

It was so high up in the sky, it about broke my brain looking at it. I realized it had to be on the very edge of the atmosphere, which meant it had to be huge. There were tiny lights spaced around the inside edge of it, the opening having enough of a thickness that it was part of a wall, maybe a wall that went all the way around the earth; the lights blinked in slow unison. Through the opening I could see blueish swirling mists, and then what looked like randomly-designed alien spacecraft flying by on the other side.

The door began to open wider just by slowly making itself bigger upwards and downwards. I found this really strange, because surely I wasn't supposed to be seeing this and who knows how long it had been hidden by whoever was behind this. Maybe they still had no idea their door/portal/whatever it was, was visible and still very much so. I could see a huge ship looming beyond as the door opened to a square. The ship looked something like the Enterprise from Star Trek but darker and I could only really see the disk portion.

Then suddenly the door began to close really quickly, and when it closed completely I couldn't see it anymore. Hmm, somebody figured out the thing was visible finally. I vaguely remember being really dizzy, then I went inside and started telling everybody about it. I think there was more interest from some people than others (I forget as this was one of many dreams in a row), and then I noticed that there was morning sunshine outside, and I vaguely remembered that it was growing light out when I came inside.

I said something like, "And it's light out, I've lost some time." This meant the aliens had noticed exactly who had seen their door, and probably done something to me, since I was standing outside in the dead of night. I could still remember what I'd seen, though, so... either they'd failed to make me forget, or were keeping tabs on me. I suddenly wondered if they could hear everything I said, if they'd maybe put some kind of monitoring device in me.

(This is apparently what happens after I spend 3+ hours on Skype talking to someone I met via Cry's video game livestreams, before going to bed. That someone would be Hiro, who you will be seeing here shortly. O.o )

I was playing some kind of coop multiplayer Amnesia-like game with Hiro via both the game client and chatting with Skype, except that instead of normal Amnesia: The Dark Descent with its medieval castle interior, the concept was to run around a modern day mental hospital plagued with monsters (the zombie ones from the Amnesia game) and avoid being caught by them or the regular staff while looking for books. Hiro's character was an Asian boy in his early teens and I was a girl with long-ish blonde hair; I think I'd gone with Alice for my character's name.

The building's layout was bizarre for an actual hospital. Hallways were ridiculously skinny, had maze-like branches all over the place and interconnected rooms, and you couldn't do anything about the lights that were always on. Everything was painted white, so there was no real chance of hiding anywhere in the open. Not only would the monsters cause you to pass out if they caught you, but doctors and nurses also wandered the hall and any of them including the monsters catching you meant waking back up in your room. I can't remember if the rooms were locked by default, I just remember it being so much backtracking that you didn't want to get caught, plus there was a feeling of impending doom like something bad was going to happen if you couldn't escape the place in time.

The point of the books was that they somehow unlocked doors. The books were hardcover, red, and had gold filigree designs on the covers that were all the same. If I remember right, they all had a four digit number on the first page while the rest of the pages were blank, which had to do with how they opened the doors. Some books were fakes and only the right ones would actually open a door at all, and only the door they were meant to. The books could be found in closets or refrigerators that were otherwise empty of anything else, and if you had one that worked with you when you opened the right door, the door would just automatically unlock itself.

I remember being in a small room that had a fridge and two closets, and Hiro took a book out of the fridge while I grabbed one from a closet. At this point it was becoming real as opposed to a video game, although I still had some odd fuzzy concept of an inventory system so that I wasn't literally carrying the books around (I had several by now), they just vanished but I still "had them." I remember hearing a monster grumbling out in the hall right at that moment. The hall went around the room outside past two different doors on opposite ends. Hiro told me to go one way and he'd go the other and distract the monster.

I didn't like this idea but he was already out the one door so I ran through the other. I realized somehow that he'd been caught by the staff and I kept running, as for some reason they were assuming Hiro was the only patient not in his room. He'd bought me some time, but now I had to figure out how to put it to good use and if I stayed in the halls I still ran the risk of getting caught at random. I found a nurse's bathroom and hid under the sink. The idea was to burn some time so the staff would get complacent and maybe enough would go to sleep after-hours so I could finally escape.

Logic really started falling apart at this point (apparently if you stay in one place in a dream for too long, small constant changes start building up into ridiculousness). What started as a long counter with sinks in it and one big cupboard area underneath with several doors (my hiding spot was as far into the corner opposite the entry door by the far end of the sinks as possible), slowly turned into just a counter without the cupboard underneath, and then finally the counter had some kind of tablecloth which hid me better. I remember spending a lot of time trying to make sure I was as squeezed into the corner as it got, and that the white dress I was wearing was staying hidden with me instead of flared out partly so it was visible from beyond the counter.

This whole time I was dreading that someone would actually come into the bathroom, and yes, eventually a nurse and a nurse's assistant walked in, both women. For some reason, they had a bunch of dirty dishes on a two-tiered rolling metal cart. The assistant started shoving dishes under the counter and it was obvious she could see me, but I sat there and thought "You can't see me, you can't see me," over and over. At this point I vaguely understood that I was in a dream and that logic had broken enough she shouldn't have seen me right off the bat.

She didn't say anything to her superior who was blathering on about various gossip and directions for the next shift or something, and I realized it wasn't because I was desperately trying to insist in my head that she couldn't see me. The assistant wasn't evil, and knew this place was way more than just some honest asylum. She kept glancing at me but only crammed more dishes under the counter (I could hardly move for all the dishes). Suddenly the nurse in charge started saying really crazy things, like she was hallucinating and what she saw was no longer what anyone else in the room saw. The nurse stood still and started staring off at nothing as what she was saying rambled to a halt, and the assistant looked at me and mouthed the word, "Run."

I managed to extricate myself from the dishes without making any noise and ran out of the bathroom, not noticed at all by the crazy spaced-out nurse. I found a new hallway that led to a large closet, and inside the closet was a whole lot of hanging lab coats. I couldn't see the back of the closet, so I kept pushing through and the lab coats gave way to winter jackets and I found myself suddenly breaking out of a very thick display of such coats in a clothing store at a shopping mall.

There were tables just beyond, possibly for a cafe in this same store (logic, what is this concept? we don't do logic in dreams). There were randomly dream created family members there who recognized me and greeted me only like it was any old day, not like I'd been locked away in the funny farm. They didn't know, and I myself wasn't even sure how I'd gotten locked up there now. While they asked me mundane questions I said something to the effect of, "Listen, I've just escaped from a mental asylum up there on the hill," and pointed off in the general direction of where the hospital was (you couldn't see it from inside the mall).

They were all like, "Yeah right, very cute ha ha," and I said, "No, I'm serious, and I'm not even sure that I'm really out of there at all." I had a bad feeling that I was still somewhere in the asylum while hallucinating what I was seeing now, or somehow had my "spirit" split between the places and maybe I could actually tell these people something useful before waking back up in the asylum. I just hoped I was still hidden somewhere instead of stuck in my room again. I remember one dark-haired guy who was a random family friend looking off in the general direction of the hospital, he was starting to be convinced there was more to this.

This started with other stuff but got interesting as I was standing in a parking lot outside of a tall building in the daytime. I saw a dog flying through the air like it was swimming happily through it, about ten feet off the ground. It was a golden retriever type of dog. Meanwhile, buh? I kept watching, knowing something incredible was going on, and as the dog got further away there appeared just above it a kind of black mist in a tight swirl. Jagged black lines or black lightning came down from the mist and totally disintegrated the dog, and the whole thing vanished. It gave me the impression that something had just deleted an anomaly, and I wasn't supposed to see any of it.

I remember seeing a gentleman in Victorian-era clothing off on a sidewalk a moment later, and I think there was something else odd about it but I can't remember what now. The black mist stuff appeared above him too and POOF bye mister whoever you were. There was something else too that made no sense and then black-mist-vanished, can't remember what it was, but at this point I looked up at the sky and noticed there were very dark clouds that were parting in a wide circle above the tall building near me. I could see the side of a building with a whole bunch of windows in kinda dated apartment style, and that was falling very slowly downwards.

I realized there must be some kind of instability between our dimension and one nearby, and that I probably had very little time to find somewhere safe from the impending crash of that building up above. I had no idea how big the thing even was, and had a feeling that running away wouldn't suffice. So I ran into the big building because I (somehow) knew it had a deep basement system. I ran inside and started yelling for anyone to hear that they had to get down under the ground as far as possible. Even if we ended up buried but alive we might have a chance to get out or get dug out, in the meantime I just yelled at random people to go downstairs as far as they could.

I found some people having a church service in one room as I was trying to find the stairs down, and they were having trouble believing me. Whatever, sucks to be them, I kept going until I found a way down. The dream setting started to shift to where I was now only in a house and there was a downstairs that was still unfortunately half-open to open ground (large windows filled one wall, it was like the house was built on the side of uneven ground so the front door upstairs was on one level of ground and the bottom opened out onto the lower ground).

I was now trying to get a bunch of kids to hide, and I remember ducking down almost behind one couch and then thinking as I sat there that this wasn't going to help. I ran back upstairs and found a closet that had a laundry machine in it and enough room for someone to be in there. Several someone's technically, another girl arrived and wanted to hide with me while a third thought she could find somewhere better. I tried to tell her otherwise but she ran off so we shut the door.

Then the crash hit, and logic went all to heck. It felt like the closet had somehow been separated from the house and catapulted straight upwards. The explosion outside was something now like a nuke going off, and as the other girl and I kept our feet against the door while sitting on the floor with our backs to the washing machine, the floor started getting really hot. There were random sheets of metal like extra-large cookie sheets and possibly a flat plywood section or something, I tried sticking one or two of those under us to keep from being fried as the floor took on a look that it was burning straight through (reminded me a bit of partly-cooled lava texture in video games).

I remember thinking that if we were flying through the air, at some point we'd come back down and I had no idea how we were supposed to survive the impact. The logic fell apart so much though that the dream began to change entirely, to the point that I think I was telling someone else about it in a new house in a new location that I thought was actually not a dream, knowing at that point that the other part was a dream. I think I believed it was a warning, though, and that something really bad was about to happen.

I remember the idea that something tipped me off, but I'm not sure what. I ran to the windows and looked out, and saw a whole bunch of ridiculously large metal cubes (like Borg ships but smoother) arriving in the sky very high up and hovering there. I said, "They're here," and I told everyone to hide. There were random children of various ages and one or two adults in this house that my dream-self knew, and one person from real life which was my little sister who the dream decided was about thirteen again.

So yes, I told everyone to hide and I told them not to move, no to try and run away. Just find a good place to hide inside the house and stay there. I grabbed my white down comforter (that I actually own in real life) and found a closet that was painted white inside with fairly large shelves, like you could stack three or four rolls of toilet paper on each one. There was actually packages of toilet paper in there and not much else, and there were really only about two of them though they were some of the bigger packages (12 rolls, 24 rolls). I scooted under the bottom shelf with the comforter, toilet paper, and a random box of a half-decent size. Right at that moment my sister showed up to stand outside the door.

She seemed unsure this was going to work but I told her again to go hide, it was our only chance. She disappeared and I finished making a fairly decent hiding spot if nobody pulled the stuff out of the way. I lay there perfectly still and closed my eyes, and for some reason by this point the dream had decided there hadn't been a door on the closet in the first place. The house got very quiet and I started feeling very sleepy. So sleepy that it was like I could fall asleep right there even knowing we were about to or quite possibly now currently being invaded by aliens. I remember thinking I hoped if I fell asleep I would remain still and would survive simply because I remained hidden even while sleeping.

Light started to grow brighter, but my eyes were still closed. There wasn't any sound. I kept my eyes shut, and the light got brighter and brighter. I had a bad feeling there was one of the aliens standing outside the closet door right now, quite possibly staring straight at my hideout. I'm not sure if it was my imagination or a sorta movie-like dream info bit that showed a smooth, slender humanoid figure of a very light cream color standing out in the hall with a very bright light thing in its hands that just sort of glowed from some kind of central point.

I hoped that it couldn't literally see through the stuff I had in the way, and I was very aware for a very long moment of trying not to move, of trying to breathe without moving as much as possible. Then the light went away finally, and fairly quickly, and I realized the thing hadn't found me after all. I waited a bit longer and then peeked out from my hiding spot, saw nothing, and crept out further. One of the children came up to me whimpering and I asked if some of the others had try to run away from the house itself and she said yes. It was the two other adults, they'd been taken by the aliens and only the kids who had hidden stayed free for now.

While everyone seemed to think that for the moment we were safe, I knew better. I told them I had a bad feeling this was just a preliminary check, something fast to get the majority of people who didn't see it coming or weren't smart enough to hide right off the bat. I told them the aliens probably had some kind of device that would detect us but was clunkier to haul around or whatever, and now we needed to get out of the house. I think I was trying to figure out where to go, I have vague memories of some kind of Army base being nearby (maybe not very close but worth trying to travel to on foot) or possibly another structure with some kind of underground that was abandoned or not used much, and would serve as a better place to hole up and figure out what the heck to do, meet and/or gather others who had stayed free thus far.

I don't know what my solution was in the end, though, because then I woke up.

This started as me watching a movie in a theater, and during one of the previews I noticed that the music was the theme to Raising Arizona, the one that plays during the opening credits. I said as much out loud, but nobody seemed to care. I wondered to myself if this was just trailer music or if they'd actually use it in the film. Then the movie proper started, and the first identifiable character was Bill Pullman playing someone who worked on a farm, or so it would seem since he was riding a tractor. Perhaps he was the son of the farm's owner, the feeling was that he was more than just a farmhand. The time period seemed dated, perhaps the 1930's or 40's.

Then he was walking along an orchard path with two girls, one probably in her mid 20's right next to him and the other, a teenager perhaps 14 or 15 following behind. I became the girl who was following. Bill (let's call him that because I have no idea what his character name was) and the other girl were talking, and it was obvious she was trying to be sweet on him. He seemed to be acting a little bashful over that, but wasn't being totally sweet back at her. They had very distinct southern accents, perhaps even a bit overdone (as Nostalgia Critic would say, "I'm acting!").

My own accent I knew was far different from theirs, "normal" in my opinion but an outsider here, me being a city girl from up north just visiting for the summer or something. I'd visited before, these people were family friends, maybe distant cousins... and I also liked Bill, but I wondered if he even knew I existed in that sense. (I had an inkling here of the grander plot that my character wouldn't know, that I might be surprised how much attention he actually paid me, but that he might not guess at my thoughts due to my age and not being there all the time.)

There were a lot of bright yellow flowers on the trees we were passing, and some other trees were more like tulip trees with I think pink flowers that were bulkier. I picked one of the yellow ones, it had a lot of soft petals and I smelled it as I kept following the others. I picked a second flower, and then the girl sounded like she was going to break into song. I remember thinking something like "Is this movie a musical? I had no idea..." and was hoping it wasn't going to be sucktastic (I like good musicals and well I didn't like this woman so my opinion was already a bit tainted at least of this number... nevermind that there was still the floating thought that this was a movie even though it was becoming more and more that the movie's plot and world were the real world completely).

The song ended up being something that I sang in tandem with her, and it started with the first verse of "These Are a Few of My Favorite Things" (from The Sound Of Music). It would seem we'd practiced this to performance level, for a local talent show that we'd already done. I had the melody after her, and a made-up bit of completely original tune and words (which I can't remember now) and then she had her own bit after me. We even did a bit of almost folk-type dancing together, and as this was going on... the setting went from broad daylight to night without my noticing any great flaw in the logic.

Our path had taken us into a hayfield or something similar, and the section where we were now as her song part continued seemed freshly mowed. Due to how dark it was, I was feeling uncomfortable about the odd mown layer of grass-like clippings on the ground over the inch-high remaining stalks. I think the singing stopped, and I was wondering to myself how safe it was to be out here this late, perhaps we should go back...

I was a bit further ahead of the others, and suddenly my head started to hurt. I put my hand to my forehead and fell backwards, at least the ground was kind of soft and I don't remember that being an issue. What I do remember is saying, "It's happening again!" like I'd forgotten about this but was now remembering that something had happened before. I could hear the others sounding concerned in the distance, Bill I think shouted something, but all I could really do was look up at the clear night sky with its billions of stars.

Suddenly all was completely silent. I think I said something like, "Is someone there?" and my voice sounded weirdly echoey, like I was suddenly in a completely different space I couldn't see. I could see my own reflection slightly, a little bit above me, which didn't make sense, but there it was. Then there was a bright blue-white light that seemed to come from nowhere in the stars and got bigger and brighter very fast, coming straight at me and engulfing me and I screamed in fear and tried to raise my arms up in front of my face.

I felt a strong pull and knew that whatever it was, it had captured me. It was too bright to see but I had the impression of a great deal of speed and travel upwards into the sky and beyond. Once I could see again, I found myself in a very strange, smallish... room-thing. (Being as this was a time period when space travel didn't exist, along with a lot of established sci-fi conventions, "I" was very confused by a layout that wouldn't be all that unconventional for a modern day mind.) If I had been able to move properly, I might have been able to touch the sides of the grey metal shaft that I seemed to be at the top of, and the front and back would have been barely in reach. The walls to the left and right of me didn't have a sharp corner up above, but a more gentle curve up to a flat ceiling not real far above me. I think there was a window to my right, where I could see outer space, but I was too afraid to be distracted by that.

I was being held in place by glass inch-thick plate-like separators that seemed to extend from the walls horizontally and had holes in them to fit my neck, my chest at about my elbows, and probably a couple more points down lower. I couldn't really see what was down below me. Being stuck like this was frightening but it didn't really hurt because I was technically floating. I didn't know if something was supposed to happen to me, or had already happened to me, but I knew I couldn't remember anything so detailed as this from before and wondered if I was more conscious than whoever this was... aliens... thought I was.

The plates started to retract away from me, having even splits in them and pulling into the walls, and then part of the wall in front of me slid down, revealing a window where behind was a boy maybe my age or a little older. He was wearing a grey jumpsuit and had brown hair that was roughly shoulder-length and in an unconventional style (vaguely emo-ish). We stared at each other for a moment, he looked just as confused as I'm sure I did, and then I realized that I was being drawn downwards by an unseen force.

He started banging on the window and shouting, "Let me out!" as the force became faster, and I could tell he wasn't yelling at me, more at whoever was doing this. I lost sight of him quickly though and suddenly couldn't see, the world growing very dark. I felt a strong push backwards, very strong, the same unknown force that never actually seemed to touch me. Then backwards became down, and fast, as if that direction had always been down, and I felt like I hit something soft so fast that it stunned me.

I realized my eyes were closed and most of my body unresponsive, but I could move my left hand and felt around. I was recognizing my own bed (not my real-life one, but this dream was continuing to supply built-in-past facts as needed). I concentrated on waking up, though I knew what I'd just been through wasn't a dream, and I had no idea how long I'd been back, what the others had seen, or how my return had been explained to my parents in the house below, or if they even knew I was back. I had a feeling they did, that somehow what had happened could be explained away and that they'd call me crazy or over-imaginative for telling the truth... which I was going to to anyways. Meanwhile I was able to get up finally and felt really fuzzy, like my body was still half asleep.

I got off the top bunk of the bunk beds I slept in and knew I had to draw what I could remember. I was also thinking about the boy, wondering if he was trapped there indefinitely and wondering if there was some way to save him. Plus, he was cute, and I had to wonder if we'd met before but I just couldn't remember. I tried to find paper and a working pencil, also pulling down the blinds and closing curtains nearby thinking that the aliens might still be watching me and might not want me to be able to remember so much of what I'd seen this time. I had trouble with the curtains, and eventually called it good and tried to turn on a light to see better, but that barely did anything at all (and I remember saying out loud, "oh, so it's going to be like that," as a reference to lights not working properly in dreams, but I didn't catch this thought well enough to make it a true lucid dream).

I ended up leafing through a large newsprint-like sketchpad and finding a half-cut-up scrap and an ink pen. I drew the top area of the ship I'd been trapped in, just the general shape of it and without the concept of the window(s) or the boy. I drew it really badly, I seemed to be having trouble getting the concept of drawing to cooperate, but by the end of it I had at least the shape and the idea that it had a lot of rivets down on paper. I tore the drawing out of the sketchpad and headed for the door.

I was Riddick in a prison on a world that seemed to be half futuristic technology and half medieval. The immediate prison area definitely looked ancient, floor and walls of old-style stone and some of the cells were open behind walls of black iron bars and some had wooden doors and proper stone walls. The lighting wasn't very good, and I had an almost modern-day Earth orange prisoner jump suit on. My cell had a wooden door, the cell to the right of me was larger and the more open-style. It also contained several prisoners, while I was alone.

I don't remember how I unlocked my door, but I do remember watching a guard who was taunting the prisoners in the next cell. The guard had punkish black leather clothes almost like he'd walked out of Mad Max. I had some kind of vaguely-sharp metal instrument and managed to get close enough to the guard before he noticed me, and slit his throat. Bad day to be a guard.

I looted his pockets first while the other prisoners made entirely too much noise congratulating me on my feat. I wanted to take the guard's clothes too but I was afraid there were more unfriendlies on the way, so I gathered up the miscellaneous stuff I'd found on him so far. But since no hacks showed up in the next few moments I pulled the guard's pants off as well while still holding the stuff (dream logic was failing very badly here, physics be damned). Somehow I also managed to get dressed at this point. Yeah. Oh, and I had this odd jacket thing on now, that was only like leather straps on the front in an X and on the back was the British flag embossed in color on leather. There was the thought that I'd already had that in my possession, though.

Now I needed to hide for a minute and found what seemed to be some kind of janitor's closet nearby, though it had a small window in it. I shut the door and dumped the stuff I'd acquired on a wooden counter. There were a couple more-useful knives, some odd almost surgical-looking knife things that had short round-ended blades with serrations along the ends as well, and other stuff that skipped my attention for the moment. There was a light in the room, a glass lantern with a bright candle-like flame in it, and I didn't want the light attracting attention so I opened the lantern and tried to blow out the flame. For some reason there remained a very slight, tiny blue luminescence where the flame had been, just floating there.

In the stuff the guard had, there was a small clear box about 2 inches wide by 2 inches tall by 1 inch deep. I was able to trap the light in the box, and then stepped out of the closet long enough to chuck the thing in the general direction of the other prisoners and said something to the effect of "Enjoy." I figured I was better off with the distracting light over by them, should other guards show up.

Back in the closet-room I was about to look through the stolen stuff better when I noticed the stupid light was back on again and just as bright as it had originally started.

I'm already forgetting a lot of this, but it started somewhere in trying to find a movie theater I was supposed to be going to with my randomly dream created friends. I'd gotten separated from them and was trying to find them again in an area like an outdoor shopping mall. It was starting to get dark as I neared the movie theater itself, and then something huge and flaming crashed down from out of the sky. Logic didn''t handle this very well, I'm not exactly sure where the thing landed but I do know it killed a lot of people in the shopping area. Also it seemed this death-from-space was a preliminary attack for aliens invading, but the dream plot didn't really do anything with that detail and I never saw the aliens (as if they stayed in orbit waiting).

I survived, and saw that the people who were left seemed to be turning into zombies. Some of them actually looked like zombies while others were normal looking people acting all "Braaaains"-ish without actually going far enough into cheesy horror tropes to say that. They also didn't talk, whereas the few non-zombie survivors were pretty much screaming their heads off (and making nice targets for getting eaten with all that noise).

Some of the dream seemed to happen out of order, and I also woke up in the middle of it and went back to sleep, straight into the same dream though it seemed to have backed up some. I am fairly sure that before I woke up the first time, I and a couple of guys who were possible military types managed to secure an old mansion and created a home base in the basement. There was a radio broadcast that helped me find them, one that was dangerous to produce but they did it every day just in case there were more survivors. It would also seem that the meteorite and zombie infection thing was more widespread than just our area.

There was also a kid who was maybe fifteenish at the most who had holed up in his family's van down by the beach, and had no idea anyone had survived that was not a zombie. I had his point of view for a little bit. There was a character who was basically Hurley from ABC's Lost who drove around looking for survivors during the daytime, and missed the kid because he hid thinking everyone was dangerous.

Meanwhile, one of the military-esque guys and I were going to go do the daily radio broadcast and I think that was the point where I woke up. Back to sleep again, and the plot had returned to previous to actually gaining the house stronghold (which sucked, that was a nice place and had taken some work). So we had to do that again, and it was noticeable now that there was nobody around on the surface during the day. Apparently the zombies didn't like sun (heh my subconscious was ripping off I Am Legend and this logic-broken version is still better than that POS Will Smith movie xP ).

We were trying to actually locate the mansion, a lot of the city and surrounding town was wrecked and a mess and we were still careful of zombies whether there were any showing or not. We ended up underground for some reason, I think raiding a weapons stash the guy with me knew was there, and we found a zombie lady who didn't actually try and kill us. She could talk, and I think we might have asked her if there was any way she could help us, if she wanted to, maybe like by spying on the zombies or something. She wasn't really sure what she could do but she wandered off to try.

My point of view switched to Hurley who was back out at the beach a second time, and he saw the kid who tried to run away. But Hurley convinced him via the usual overly-honest humor that he wasn't a zombie and told him about the rest of us and the hideout we were going to make, and that it was going to be much safer there. So the kid hopped in whatever vehicle it was Hurley had and they drove off.

(This was actually from several days ago... and I apparently didn't save the chat log I had hoped to use to remember more bits, but oh well.)

I had Riddick's baby, but Riddick didn't seem to be around. The dream started after the giving-birth part. The baby had normal eyes and as a newborn was already trying to keep its head up without help; I noticed because I was holding the baby upright and making sure to help with the head thing and it was like... okay wow, baby is strong! (Or stubborn.) Anyways, it was a girl, but I don't remember any name for it.

Then I knew, somehow, that Riddick was dead. And it didn't bother me at all. WTF. It was just like "okay, plot point, moving on." I also knew that aliens were supposedly coming to check on this baby at some point... a sort of friendly hello / checkup /whatever. (Did I mention this dream makes no sense? More so than normal...)

The next part I remember, it was past sunset on a beach and getting quite dark, and there were a lot of teenagers goofing off in the water. I was worried about them because the current was really strong and they didn't seem to be paying attention. Then there was suddenly this long metallic leg thing that went into the water, and I looked up and saw a big spindly metal creature with a small top bit that had a blue light coming out of it. The light was finely-focused, and it seemed to be looking around with it.

Well I figured this was one of the aliens that was supposed to come see how the baby was doing. I waved at the light as it went by me but it didn't seem to care. I was just kinda going, "Oh... that's odd..." and didn't really care either, sorta watching it. Then I got a bad feeling that maybe this was an evil alien, and it was actually here for the baby for some reason and just hadn't figured that out yet.

So I started walking off down the beach away from the alien and the other people as well. Then the blue light fixed on me and I knew this wasn't good. I ran as fast as I could but something happened and I fell forward. I was so worried I'd hurt the baby, but it seemed to be okay beyond crying. I couldn't really move, like I'd been stunned or shocked by the alien. Then the baby was gone, just gone, and I knew the alien had taken her. The alien was gone too.

There was a nondescript structure nearby and someone was hiding in the shadows next to it, some Hispanic teenager. Somehow I knew he had something to do with all this, that he was one of the bad guys. I started beating him up to get information out of him, I was so upset about losing the baby. Then some of the other people from down the beach started coming over to see what had happened, see if I was alright. I told the guy to stay in the shadows because I wasn't finished with him yet, then tried to go tell the people I was okay or something.

He didn't stay put, coming out where people could see he was all banged up. They were like, "Uh, what's going on?" He finally confessed that he had something to do with this, but all he knew was there were clues hidden back at my and Riddick's house. He said he'd show me where. I think I knew a couple of the people on the beach, but they were just kinda random dream-made friends. We went back to my house (random house of dream illogic) and the guy showed us a corner and said it was under the floorboards.

By this time it seems like I'd kinda forgotten about being upset over the baby. (Sort of like not caring about Riddick being dead??) We pulled up the floorboards without any delay and started pulling things out from a small hidden area that was probably a good 4 feet deep but not very wide. One bag that came out of a decent size, someone said was diamonds. That went nowhere, apparently... it just got set aside and the dream forgot about it. We were, after all, looking for clues, but WTF. xD

There were a bunch of screwdrivers, little ones, that were supposedly a puzzle. If we could solve it, we'd know more about the grander mystery. Again, logic failed and we also failed the puzzle just as badly. Meanwhile the evil teenager kid is just sorta sitting around and I really don't remember caring about the fact that he was there or what he did anymore. (Also, at this point, it seems like we were going through not Riddick's, but Vin Diesel's stuff, and I hadn't had his baby and I didn't know him and it was Vin's house... but yeah poor Vin was still dead. GAH.) Then I found some ziplock bags in the bottom of the hidden space that had what looked like SD cards in them (the little digital camera data storage cards). I figured there was probably data we could pull off them, something that would explain hopefully at least in part what was going on.

(ganked from chat transcript cuz I'm lazy and I dunno... it kind of fits the feel of the weirdness of the entire dream)

I had an ... awful dream... Aliens finally gave me a nightmare...

well... at first it was from either like a movie or someone else's perspective, I remember this scientist guy and a couple military guys... and there was some confusion (dream logic fail) about what exactly had happened to them but they'd survived, and this was on some kind of either colony outpost or ship (yes, more logic fail, BIG DIFF lol)

well, someone finally figured out the scientist might have been uh... alienfied

and right as they're having this epiphany, my perspective changed to being the scientist

with baaaaaad abdominal pain >__>

and my brain is going NO WE ARE NOT GOING HERE ^^;

so as I'm trying to figure out what the hell to do to live thru this, somebody's figured out the alien babies don't like UV light

and they have a little flashlight that apparently gives off UV rays

.......so here we are trying to keep this thing from uh, exploding out of me

nevermind that logic failed that whole section badly

I would'a been soo dead as a real person

it was like under my skin and moving around and trying to get out and crap >__>;;

logic. fail. and damn but it hurt.

I woke up from that before it had killed me and I think we had worked out a way to get rid of it safely

I think what happened is this dream merged from something unrelated, because the first thing I remember is arriving in a hallway with President Obama. It was at an airport somewhere and he was going to catch a plane. His family was ahead of him, he'd stopped to make a comment to a reporter or something. For some reason it was really dark in the hallway, and it was nighttime. I appeared out of nowhere, literally, as it seems I could move really fast and also turn invisible (also possibly move through walls, not sure on that though). It seems I'd done this before, as I was talking to Obama like we knew each other.

As he went out the door to outside where the plane was and I followed him, I said something like, "So the Secret Service is okay with this?" There was a member of said service nearby (hmm, dream logic fail, there should have been more security). Obama said something like, "Yeah, they're fine with it." He himself didn't seem to be phased by it at all, mister easygoing as usual. I don't think I even knew how I'd gotten my powers, or if they were some sort of magic, and as far as I knew I was the only one with abilities like that.

But all I was really thinking was that I was just happy I was getting to hang out with Obama, and was looking forward to spending some time with the family as well. We were now walking along the tarmac and still not as far ahead as the others. I looked up at the night sky and it looked like there were moving swirly symmetrical patterns glowing in the sky. I wasn't sure exactly how that was being pulled off, because it didn't seem like there were clouds... or the clouds were very thin. I pointed the display out to the president, and we stood there trying to figure out what it was. I remember venturing the theory of aliens, mostly because I wanted it to be true.

In the end though, it was some kind of show being put on, possibly for the president but being as nobody had called our attention to it without me going "hey looky sky"... who knows. There was music sync'd up to the show now, and a huge equalizer display in different colored light bars attached to the building on the far side of the tarmac. I don't remember the musical piece now.

Then the dream went decidedly less cool and only semi-related and I'm not gonna get into that.

All the people in this dream kept changing a lot, as in the person who they were (whether I know them from real-life or not) even if an entity representing that "character" remained in the same spot all the time. The first part I remember, it was daytime and I was wandering around and into a bunch of rundown buildings that didn't have much space and were crammed really close together. The rooms were tiny, most of them open to the air in some way, and the hallways and doors were often crooked. The general state of decay reminded me of Silent Hill and I said something about it, other people around me (tourists, apparently, like me?) also finding the place creepy. I didn't think it was creepy, I loved it, but the others didn't appreciate the reference.

Then beyond the buildings there was a field with hills and trees beyond, and a river to the left. A guy was hitting on me, but a guy that I liked came to my rescue and told the other one to beat it. I think the guy I liked actually fought him too, but logic was failing hard (as it will continue to in this dream). At least my guy won. This started getting a bit like The Island as it felt like we were going to get in trouble for being near each other for too long... except that the concept of guard-type people coming after us was mixed up with the concept of my real-life parents (how appropriate).

We decided to make a run for it, leave all that behind, and yet we weren't running... just walking quickly up the hill into the trees. There were still other people around, and the reason why we were moving kept getting mixed up with my still being a little upset about that flirty jerk we'd left behind. Like maybe he'd come after us.

There was something about the river... and I have forgotten whatever got us to the next areas. There was a bit where it was like we had gotten to the edge of an MMORPG world map, and yet we were in the world physically and it seemed real enough except for a bit of a CG-texture-over-topography effect when looking down past the edge of the world. The area we were in was large spaces of tall golden grasses and the area beyond where we could get to was very desert-like yellowed ground/rock. The place where we were had a bit of a rise, a little bit taller than us, and when you crawled up it and looked over, the chasm beyond was so incredibly wide and deep it created some serious vertigo. The other guy was really weirding out over the thing, and I remember almost clutching the ground where it was safe on the other side of the rise because the feeling of fear of heights was so incredibly strong when peering over the edge. I looked more than once.

At any rate, we knew we couldn't go any further that way. There was a bizarre moment in my head where I wondered if we could jump off and start back at our "home points" wherever the heck that was (like in World of Warcraft, and actually the edge of the map where we were reminded me a little of the Night Elf home island except the landscape type was wrong). But I didn't want to risk actually killing ourselves as that might hurt and it might not work. And damn but that was a really effin' long drop.

More is missing from what I remember, but the next bit put us in a WWII era car and it seemed to be that time period, as if it always had been. I think we'd hitchhiked or something, and then the plot changed, where the boyfriend type person didn't exist anymore and I was part of a team of possibly-American soldiers. We were in Europe (the terrain was still really dry), supposedly going to France and/or England to escape the German invasion, and we had started in southwest Europe which in the dream failed to recognize the concept of Spain completely (even the word). Anyways, I was sitting in the back right seat composing poetry on a printed sheet of something else (yeah, modern-day printout sheet in black and white and a typical ballpoint pen).

There were three others in the car, one guy in the back seat opposite me and two up front. The guy in the back with me, none of the rest of us liked him. The two others were my friends. I read the poetry out loud, it was some sarcastic thing that if read between the lines was a direct insult/slam on the guy nobody liked; he didn't get it, and it's possibly because some of the references were in-jokes with my friends. After I read it, it was like we knew he was some kind of double agent and it was actually a bad thing to have him in the car... and it was like he was somehow in control of the situation so we were all kinda screwed if we couldn't figure something out. And he thought that was impossible.

I wrote something else on the edge of the paper and showed it to the driver. Also, I was magically now in the front passenger seat. I was trying to make sure it didn't look like I was passing a message, and also be sure the driver saw it. He nodded and smirked and the other ally got the message too cuz he saw the paper and yet somehow the bad guy didn't. The bad guy was getting suspicious that we were planning something but still, he thought he had the upper hand. What I had written was something to the effect of "drive the car off a cliff?" Somehow it was like we'd survive this and he wouldn't, or it would screw up some master plan bigger than us and it'd be worth risking our own lives. Those words I had written also totally matched with something I'd inadvertently written at the end of the poem. (I wish I could remember that poem!)

So now the driver was looking for something steep to drive the car off without the bad guy noticing. This wasn't going so well, and then I'm not sure exactly what happened but there was something about a bridge, and possibly using that since it went over a steep drop, and yet the next thing I remember is we were safely in the middle of a road surrounded by fairly flat terrain. I was now in the back left seat and the driver changed as well to someone I know in real life and would rather not mention. He was one of the allies at this point though. The passenger seat held the other ally, and the bad guy and a new bad guy (which the dream just sorta decided had always been there) were sitting in the back with me.

I whispered up to the driver, something about trying to do something about our predicament. This was also the first real time where it felt like the bad guys were actual Nazis as opposed to some other nonspecific enemy. I remember the driver saying something... agreeing with my concern but not really sure we could do anything. I was left with the feeling that if I wanted to do anything, I had to do it myself. Maybe the other ally would be more open to trying something direct if I started it...

Now the driver changed to someone else from real life who I won't mention, and he was the main enemy in the car. Dream logic got really confused over who else was who at this point, but my memories focus on what I was doing so let's stick with that. I decided to try and jump the driver, grabbing his neck and partly moving over the seat so I could get more leverage. I was trying to break his neck, and it was really hard because he knew I was trying to do it. Also, dream logic gave his neck muscles more strength than any normal person should have (grrr). I may have had a moment of lucidity where I just kinda decided "okay, you're dead, let's move this dream plot on please." Either way, the next bit defaulted to him being dead or no longer an issue. My ally from the front seat I do believe managed to get whoever was in the back seat under gunpoint to help further my own ability to subdue the driver.

The car had stopped and I think I had kicked the driver out the door or something. That left one bad guy in the car, in the seat behind me, and it was, I kid you not, Hitler himself. For some bizarre reason we just told him to get out of the car. I don't think dream logic was matching up the importance of the person with the situation in which we were in. It was like he was just another one of these bizarrely-changing characters, with slightly more realistic ties to the time period. Whatever, we told his ass to bail and left him on the side of the road all dejected-like. We foiled the master plan of whatever the hell was going on in the car! YAY!

We were still worried that the bad guys would track us down, as we had this new overriding idea that we had to get back to Allied territory and be truly safe. Maybe we had some sensitive information stolen from the bad guys. Maybe it was just the fact that they'd tried to kidnap us instead of kill us, and that meant something, and even if they just flat-out killed us or recaptured us now if they caught us... uhhh, I think we wanted to live. So yeah, meanwhile, I'm the driver apparently. There are still two random allies in the car (both guys, I was the only girl in this whole segment), one in the passenger seat and one in the back.

After getting the car started again I noticed and mentioned out loud that even though we were in Europe, everyone was driving on the right side of the road and even the car we were in was American-style with the driver seat on the left. I wondered if we were in a country where this was specifically the rule, or if some weird conformity thing had hit while we were not paying attention. We thought it was funny at any rate. What was not funny was the first major intersection I came to, I realized the brake pedal didn't work! A thought flashed through my mind that this might have been an extra safety measure for the bad guys, in case we got away... we'd end up dying in a car crash or at least wrecking the car.

I knew the bad guy had stopped the car earlier though. My memory of that was very fuzzy, but I got an image of him using the emergency brake. I pulled on the handbrake and it sort-of worked. I did manage to get the car to slow down and/or stop, the next bit was just a lot of stupid dream-logic-failed driving and modern day traffic situations mixing in where they shouldn't have been. We were also trying to find a town to hide out in and rest, and that was failing badly too. I remember towns that looked like toy houses literally, or CG renderings that we obviously couldn't visit, or things like that. Also, I got an image of a map showing sort-of-Europe (if most of southwest Europe had been squished up into one small almost-island-looking thing) showing a line where we'd actually been driven by the bad guys (going east towards Axis territory, at least that part made sense) as opposed to north. So the idea was to go north, and that at least was happening.

Eventually it was getting dark and I think we were thinking we should have been getting to Vienna soon. Vienna was, magically, some sort of shipping port or something in the north of France. (Vienna is actually in Austria, quite a bit to the east of where the dream thought it was.) We still didn't seem to be in friendly territory, as apparently the Germans had taken all of France already or something. We did find a town finally that we could stop into, but it was spread all over hills and it was still kinda not making sense. I think it might even have been Vienna, but all the buildings were mostly just really small houses and there was possibly a ferry dock on the north end by the water.

It was starting to rain as I headed the car towards that north part of town and suddenly my allies were no longer in the car. The original idea seemed to have been that they were going to look for food, but then it seemed more like I'd almost misplaced them. At that same moment, what had helped me discover that they were missing was that the car wasn't a car anymore... it was a plastic-fabric duffel bag I was dragging along the ground. An empty bag. No passengers. Meanwhile I was pulling the thing up a wet, dark hill that didn't actually have a road. (Logic bailed totally. Bye logic.)

I decided to find somewhere that we all could stay, and sort of hoped that the guys would find me or I planned to go find them after securing a room. Right by where the ferry was supposed to be (more logic fail, it was possibly a bridge or a broken-down bridge at this point) was a building marked Hotel with a red neon sign. When I got in there, though, it appeared to be a very small room with some old guy in charge of it. I asked if he had a place where we could stay, and he showed me a closet in this room that was basically a broom cupboard with a simple sleeping mat or two on the floor, a barrel, and yeah, a broom. There were also rats, and he said we could brave them if we wanted to sleep there. At first I was really worried about the rats and then I think logic decided it didn't like that bit of the story, so the rats were friendly, and one of them was on the top of the barrel just being cute. (It looked like saphiresdreams new rat Blob, a black and white pattern to the fur. ♥)

Okay, fine, I decided to take the "room," and there was some issue over money (and logic related to it, I'm sure) but either way I reserved the thing. Now I had to locate my buddies, and I remember thinking maybe I could put the car lights on high-beam and blink them over towards the town (the hotel area was one of the highest points, and yes, this implies I had a real car again and not a damned empty duffel bag). But then I wondered if this would make the enemy find us too.

I don't remember how I got there, but apparently my subconscious thinks Hell is a series of dark tunnels randomly patrolled by trolls and ogres. I was trying not to get discovered, and I noticed that the guards had these long yellow sticks or rods with little floating stars on the end (5-pointed yellow star shapes a little bigger than a silver dollar, one per improvised torch-thingy). The stars were bright enough to give decent lighting, but they were attached to the ends of the rods with tiny chains about 6 inches long. I realized they were sentient, and were being forced to light the way for the patrols.

At some point I found a star that had managed to get free of its rod (where the heck the ogre went is beyond me). The rod glowed slightly while the star was a lot brighter. I think I told it to try and get to the surface while I continued investigating. Maybe I was going to try and save more of the stars... (maybe I had no idea how to get outa there). Right after the star left (it sorta... floated?) another patrol showed up and I tried to hide the slightly-glowing rod behind my leg while attempting to stay in deep enough shadow.

I'm going to guess they saw me, because the next thing I remember is running, but now it seemed like I was outside in a spread-out town with a lot of grass, but I still remember the area feeling like it was underground. I don't remember looking up, so who knows what was up there... maybe lighting that'd make it look like real-enough daylight where I was running. I was trying to find a building to hide in, and saw ahead of me a church. I was thinking, a church in Hell? WTF... but I ran inside anyways; the bad guys didn't see me go in there.

I was lurking around in the church, which sort of made sense layout-wise for a large Catholic-style church, though the lighting wasn't great. There were two men somewhere in the building and I was trying to stay out of sight since I thought they'd be enemies just as much as the guards were. I overheard them talking, however, and it seemed to be an actually "good" church for some reason, that it was tolerated and maybe even necessary to properly balance out Hell. I remember being worried that the ogres might come search the church but it sounds like they weren't allowed inside.

So I finally decided to talk to these guys, and they said I was welcome to stick around. We started playing Nintendo Wii of all things, all three of us, I don't remember what we played... though I do remember messing around with creating Miis. Then I think they got tired and passed out on the couch there by the TV and I decided it was a good time to try and see if I could get out of Hell. Outside the building I realized I still had my Wiimote but I was running by then and figured it was too late to take it back.

It started with thinking I'd woken up from the previous dream. I was in my bed in my place except it in no way resembled my real bed/place (yet my brain was convinced it was all normal). My kid sister showed up and wanted to play a complicated card game with me which at first I said I didn't know the rules to, so she said she'd teach me or show me, and then later seemed more like some sort of "magic trick." So she was dealing the cards and making piles out of them and asking me to pick a card and kept doing whatever it was she was doing. I was so out of it, I felt like I was really doped up on medication or perhaps I was still trying to hold on to the feeling of sleep.

My sister suddenly admitted as she combined most of the cards together again that it had been quite a while since she'd actually made sure all the cards were there. She dropped a card and said something like, "Oh mannnn" as it slid between the bed and the wall. I said I'd get it, and I think she said not to worry about it right away but I was determined to do it. I followed where the card had gone with my hand, then the bed was further away from the wall for some reason and I could keep following the route down to the floor which I did with my entire body. (Now that I think about it, the bed was sort of hospital-institutional with nicer bedding.) On the white-tile floor now, under the bed looking for the card (which was nowhere to be seen) and then I saw a length of thin chain (larger than necklace chain but smaller than the sort of chain you'd chain a gate closed with... the individual, round links might have been about 1/4 inch in diameter or maybe a touch bigger).

I wanted the chain, and I remember my sister saying something that I should leave it alone or get back to what she was showing me but I didn't care. There were other bits of chain too, two of them but in the end I stuck with the original one. It was at least two feet long and one end had a clasp, like a basic round jewelry clasp except larger, the same size as the links. I was out from under the bed by now and made the chain go around my right ankle, securing it there with the clasp and letting the other end trail. For the moment I let it drag on the floor and left the room, going out into the hallway. I don't really remember the hallway very well except that it was long and there were other doors leading into it, like a dorm floor or perhaps a hospital. There was a lot of white. I think one reason I'm having trouble remembering is because at this point I realized I was dreaming and I wanted to make the dream interesting.

I had been looking left down the hall but now I went right, starting to run a bit, holding on to the end of the chain so it wouldn't trip me. I wanted to get away, I wanted to escape, I didn't want to be here anymore, and I was thinking it's because I'm crazy and I'm in an asylum but I know this place is actually evil and I have to get out! Have to run, have to try. As I was thinking this stuff trying to convince the dream to take that plot concept, I could see the hallway ahead of me literally merged into a different-color hallway, sort of dingier with some sepia-tone to it and it seems like some puke-green color. There were wheelchairs and I knew that I could run into it and the dream would change properly.

So I did, still with the chain around my ankle (which as the plot went now was something I'd been secured to my bed with and had broken). As soon as I was in the dingier hallway I was completely in the mental hospital, and it wasn't really very easy to run or think because of the medication I was on... that had failed to keep me properly in bed. Up ahead the hallway got wider before going back to normal size, and in the middle of the wide part was a room that I couldn't see any details about except that its walls were made of the same painted-over cinder blocks as the hallway walls. There was a man sitting against the hall wall on the left on almost the far side of the room-thing. I knew he was a patient too, but I remember thinking I shouldn't trust anyone in my little escape attempt and then it seems like I remember another patient who was a friend (or at least someone I kinda trusted) saying this guy was bad news... that he sided with the staff.

Then a nurse came out of where there was apparently a door on the left side of the room-thing and I panicked because I didn't want her to see me. She was going to talk to the man or something, and although I thought for sure she'd see me I managed to go to the right without her noticing. Although the hallway continued I knew I couldn't go that way at least right now, but there was a smaller hall where I had headed to the right, and there were a couple of little staff-related rooms there, one to the left and one to the right.

I was totally lost because I'd never seen these rooms before (I'm not sure I'd seen much of the hospital before). It seems like I realized there was someone on the left side, meanwhile the lady back out in the hall was heading my direction so I went into the room on the right and at this point was only really looking for somewhere to hide. It looked like a storage and equipment room, things laid out on shelves, some of which had no backs and were spaced out in the middle of the room. I kept along the right-side wall seeing that it had a nook in it in the corner (that went right again just a little) where maybe I could hide.

Diagram time! Mostly because if anybody can see what the heck I'm talking about by now, you're doing good.

,--,______, ,| || || |---------------The open space on the upper right is the door I came in from, and the nook is in the upper left.

When I got there I noticed that there appeared to be a door on the right side of this nook (when standing in front of it with the main room's left wall to one's left as oriented in the diagram above). It looked like a very ordinary door, a bit worn and uninteresting and painted white like the rest of the walls in the room. It wasn't locked as I opened it, but right behind was a very obviously not normal door. It was a light brown color and had no door handle. I was scared now that the nurse was going to show up any second, and I had no idea if there was some sort of special trick involved in opening the second door. I tried just pushing on it, and it actually just pushed inwards. It was almost like it was a very light piece of wood that I then had to hold onto so it didn't fall because it wasn't attached to anything. Maybe it was broken... because it had sure seemed like the first major sign of "things aren't right here in supposedly-honest asylum land."

So anyways, beyond that things were a whole lot less finished-looking, either like creepy Silent Hill mode in one of those games, or a very unfinished basement. I could hardly see, it was so dark, but I was still thinking the goddamn nurse is going to find me if I don't do something fast. For some reason I couldn't do anything about the first door I'd opened, and dream logic was failing with the second door barrier thing as it was turning into a much smaller piece of plywood. How was this supposed to help block off the doorway? Then there was a second piece, and I remember trying to prop them up one against the other in an inverted V shape and hoping that would suffice.

For some reason it did, and the doorway was completely blocked again (which makes no sense considering the two pieces of wood came up to about my waist), as if I'd just shut the first stupid door in the first place. Either way, the dream was happy to be convinced I'd succeeded at least in that step, so whatever. It was even darker now with the door properly closed, but after a moment's confused thoughts (yay meds and fear) I realized that this was a place people went and it should have lights. There was a light-switch box to the left of the door and I turned it on. I saw that the little passage I was in went to stairs downwards shortly, wooden steps that still had that very-unfinished and old look to them.

I think I then realized that having the lights on was a bad idea, as staff would guess if they showed up that someone was there that shouldn't be. So I turned them off again and moved towards the stairs. I could now see a little better as further down the steps was a large open area that was again very much like an unfinished basement. Uneven dirt floor, concrete brick walls, very high indications of perhaps windows because of little bits of light, daylight! But I knew that I wasn't that close to freedom yet. Closer, but going to those light sources wouldn't do me any good, they just helped me to see right now.

At the bottom of the stairs, to the left was some more shelving and stuff and it didn't seem like a useful way to go. The basement opened up even further to the right, so I went that way. As I was working my way along very uneven ground that looked more like I was entering the very beginnings of a subway construction sight or something, I heard people shouting behind me. They knew I was there, and also that I was quite possibly on the correct route to get out of there. I was trying to move faster, the chain still there, but as I dared glance back (even with my brain screaming don't waste the time looking back) I saw there was already a nurse about thirty feet behind me.

I kept running (or trying, I was having issues running as I seemed really tired and the air really thick) and glanced back again after another moment and I saw that the nurse was wearing red (maybe it was a different nurse, or the dream decided to change her on the fly). It was more like a fancy red dress. I had only glanced at it though, back to running, and suddenly I had a memory of someone saying the lady with the red dress was the worst possible nurse you could encounter, that if she was on your tail you had no hope. It had the feel of a hospital myth, like some people didn't believe she even existed... and yet it appeared she was now chasing me. Well, whatever, I wasn't going to give up. Another glance, oddly enough, showed the nurse's skirt was red and maybe her collar, while the rest of her outfit had turned back a more normal white.

I managed to get myself corralled into a corner finally, choosing the wrong direction to run once I got closer to the far side of the huge bizarre area. I was so close, the other way had gone to a door but meanwhile I had one very big nurse ready to sedate me. She already had the syringe in her hand and even though I begged her not to hurt me she was very determinedly going to inject me. There were a couple other nurses in her wake as well. She moved to strike and suddenly I asked her, "Are you crazy too?" and she said, "Yes." The look on her face as she said it was a brainwashed/insane but determined combination. I thought I felt pain in my neck, but then she was still holding the syringe and I was still feeling the same, not getting sleepier.

The other nurses were now standing around, and it seemed like they had sort of decided they weren't sure they wanted to be doing what they were doing anymore. They were talking about the head doctor though, and how it was pretty much impossible to cross him. I don't remember if I encouraged the thought of breaking loose, but they decided to give it a shot, and now there were other patients who had apparently followed us down here. Someone opened the door I hadn't gotten to and we all filed outside, straight out into bright, warm sunshine. We found ourselves in a little walled-off sunken area with metal steps and a catwalk leading out of it, so we followed that.

We knew we were now free, and following this path would take us to further freedom. I stopped part-way across the catwalk though. I said something like, "What about the other patients in the hospital? They don't deserve to live like that. We should try to get them out." Some people didn't want to risk their freedom by going back in there. I thought we had a chance, if we worked together, whoever wanted to go, and I did say that I understood if people didn't want to risk it, but that whoever wanted to go back in should give it a shot. Also, the dream suddenly decided that maybe some of us had Heroes-like powers. There was one teenager who looked like he could have been in My Chemical Romance the way his hair, makeup, and clothes were, and he said he had some sort of ability (I don't remember what it was). He wasn't very confident in it, sort of like a minor thing he could do as opposed to something truly impressive, but he was volunteering to go on the rescue mission if I wanted him and I definitely did. One of the nurses agreed to help, and a handful of others were thinking about it.

I was myself, more or less, trapped on a planet with bioraptors (the monsters from Pitch Black) except I'm not sure I was supposed to know that. Some part of my brain did, though, but meanwhile myself, a few other random people, and Riddick were finding light sources in a weird small metal room that was partly above-ground and had a hatch on top, situated on the edge of a field beside a junkyard. We found these black rubber headbands that had several small bright-white lights along the tops of them. I also found two flashlights, one working and one broken. I remember thinking maybe I could learn something about what broke the light, but then I decided there wasn't enough time and it wasn't important enough. We knew that whatever dangerous thing had already killed some people didn't like light (I can't remember earlier in the dream, but I do remember that we knew something icky was out there). Unfortunately, the sun had gone down and it was getting to the point where leftover sunset wasn't going to save us.

This part is hazy, but I think someone was running through the junkyard and either said the creatures were coming or got wasted. Either way, the next thing that happens is we're all running across the field, away from the junkyard / hatch-room. I see Riddick's point of view for a moment as he passes me fast, then I'm back to myself and I'm having trouble running. (I'm out of shape in real-life which was affecting the dream, and also was having that nightmarish having-trouble-running issue.) I think I called out for Riddick as I kept struggling onwards, and I didn't actually expect him to do anything besides keep running. Everyone else was doing the same, and I think I was the most behind.

He came back for me (♥), picked me up fast and carried me (I had my arms around his neck and legs around his waist, facing him). He made much better progress than I had even with him carrying my weight (which, ironically, seemed to be a bit less at this point). We made it to an area that was considered safer at the edge of the field (can't remember why, but the other people were rendezvousing there).

This dream was rather short and the logic behind it was especially strained, but I was Riddick in a modified version of Pitch Black. I was in the bone field under a large, shady bone structure, and Johns had recaptured me but hadn't actually restrained me (though it's possible he'd given me a bit of tranquilizer). The problem was that apparently I couldn't go out in open sunlight because it... would... honestly I don't remember what the problem was. I had goggles on so no problems there. (I think it was one of those things that made perfect sense in subconscious-land but in the real world is so ludicrous it's not even possible to remember it.) I just know I felt afraid whenever I got near direct sunlight because of whatever it'd do to me.

I was able to move around in the shade of the thing I was under. Johns was out of grabbing range having a conversation with Shazza and not really paying attention to me. He didn't need to, I was kinda stuck. I hated feeling like that, but no matter where I went I couldn't find a clear shaded path out of there.

I changed perspective a lot during this dream, between Riddick and Shane (a character I created for the Riddick universe, she's his daughter and this is quite possibly the first dream I've ever had of her and she was an adult or late teenager in this).

The dream took place in a futuristic storage facility with a lot of boxes and crates and various doorways and large rooms. I was Shane at first, following Riddick as we ran from the enemy, a whole bunch of clones who looked like Sebastian from Babylon 5 except they were wearing dark FBI / Men In Black suits (if you don't know the character, the actor would make a good Sherlock Holmes based on his looks). I had to stop to thin out the ranks. and started sniping them from as far off as I could with a gun that seemed like a mix of assault rifle and sniper rifle. This worked okay until the clones started multiplying here and there. (Sort of like Agent Smith from the Matrix sequels but without actually needing another body around to take over.)

I told Riddick to run on ahead while I covered him so he could see if there was a way out on our current path. I switched between Riddick and Shane's POV a bit as he headed through a door and along a suspended walkway over a large open area that led to darkening sky on the left and more of the complex ahead and to the right. The walkway made a T intersection ahead. Meanwhile Shane saw one of the clones throw a very bright flare past her, and hoped Riddick had his goggles on at that moment. Riddick had just slipped them back on, in fact. (I think dream logic kinda cheated.) The flare lit the area up very brightly and as Shane I decided to bail and catch up to Riddick.

I did, and I'm not sure what all happened next except that we split up again en route to an excape elevator (apparently this place was partly underground or wherever the exit was, it was up). As Shane I ran across an ally of some sort who tagged along, and as Riddick I took out an important woman character belonging to the enemy; she'd been guarding the elevator. I killed her and hid the body in shadow as Shane appeared with the other person.

I was Commander Riker of Star Trek: The Next Generation and I was with Wesley Crusher on a mission to get something from a space station. There was a battle going on in space nearby involving the Enterprise. (I saw the ship more than once, and every time it was lit up as if by disco lights and the surface was very shiny. The whole dream was fairly trippy like that. Lots of bright colors and stuff.) Whatever we were looking for had been stolen from the station (it was empty, there was nobody around and we knew the station would be destroyed shortly). I realized there was no way off the station but Wesley openned a small clear door on the wall and behind it were two tubes of what looked like green Kool-Ade. He gave me one and said, "Drink up, it'll warp us back to the ship." He drank his right up and disappeared. I'd never heard of anything like this but obviously it worked, so I started drinking.

The flavor was very strong and somewhat overpowering, I only made it half way through before I had to take a breath. Time and space started to blend around me and there were lots of double images. I could see the bridge of the Enterprise where the drink was trying to take me, but I hadn't finished it. I drank the rest as fast as I could but it was hard considering the warp effect and the nausea from disorientation and the not-so-great drink taste. I finished it and appeared fully on the Enterprise bridge.

It was night time. I was with my family unit in a well-lighted room, I think the living room of a big house. The family wasn't my real-life family, same with the house, but I guess they were symbolic/generic. I realized somehow that there was a vampire in the house. I don't think anyone else knew. I didn't tell them... instead I walked down the long hall to my bedroom.

It was dark in my room except for a little blue-ish moonlight. I shut and locked the door, never touching the lights. I think I sorta floated gracefully around for a moment; I was wearing this semi-Victorian flowy white dress with long sleeves and a wide neckline. (I believe the dream's timeframe was Victorian era.) Then I sat down on my bed and leaned over until I was laying sideways on it. I shut my eyes and waited for the vampire to bite me.

Finally he did, from somewhere above/behind me... but he wasn't being very nice about it. I realized he might not even intend to turn me into a vampire at all, that he was probably here for a snack. I said, "Wait! No! I want to become a vampire. Please?" He agreed and I remember part of the transformation was becoming thinner for some reason, as I was "well built" in the dream.